ON BREEDING. 207 



of the families, although bred in the same manner, and with the 

 same care in keeping, may be different from, or superior to the 

 others in some peculiar quality. Thus, these families become 

 estranged in constitutional blood, and somewhat in habit, from 

 each other. They do, in their wide separation, become new 

 herds, so far as their close original blood is concerned. After 

 some years' continuance in their varied localities, they may, there- 

 fore, be reunited, in the application of bulls to the cows of their 

 distant relations, with entire safety to the quality of their future 

 offspring. We have seen this very thing already done with 

 admirable effect, in the United States, and with an improvement, 

 if possible, on the good qualities of the originally imported stock. 

 Under such circumstances, a resort to the old blood can be 

 made, and kept intact in the herd without deterioration, and 

 thus prevent an infusion of baser, or less desirable quality, in the 

 herd proposed to be kept perfect in its lineage, and no outside 

 cross need be admitted. Bakewell did so with his Long-horns, 

 through his whole course of cattle breeding, going only twice 

 out of his own herd for a fresh bull, and then into the same 

 family blood, at the distance of a few counties away, and no 

 breeder of his time had better, if as good cattle of the kind as 

 he. Price, a noted breeder of Herefords thirty years ago — no 

 better in England — asserted that he had not gone out of his 

 own herd for a bull for forty years, and at his final sale, when he 

 gave up breeding, his cattle brought the highest prices — for 

 Herefords — that had been known. The two brothers CoHing 

 began breeding short-horns, from the best cattle they could 

 obtain from other breeders, about the year 1780. They soon' 

 got the bull Hubback, a thorough bred of their own breed, and 

 although they retained him only three years, they bred pertina- 

 ciously from his blood until the year ISlO^thirty years — 

 excepting only in Charles Colling's "alloy" family of the Gallo- 

 way cross. Charles, in that year, sold out his stock at the 



